QD Leavis' 'Fiction and the Reading Public' review.

‘Fiction and the Reading Public’ uses business models, cultural history and textual analysis to argue that culture has (almost irrecoverably) dumbed down. However, as passionately argued as the text is, the research Leavis has put into arguing her point could just as easily be put to arguing that culture has become more sophisticated, with audiences choosing different texts for different needs.

This book interested, bored, amused and angered me. I wrote almost 250 words of notes and found my thoughts haunted by it for some time. There are moments when I also feel we’ve lost something serious and meaningful as a society, which draw me into the arguments but then I remember the sheer range of culture that I can (and do) partake in and it all seems a bit silly. Aristophanes complained about dumbing down in ‘The Frogs’, Pope waged a war against ‘dulness’ - it’s not a very original idea.

What is original is the vigour Leavis goes into pursuing what seems like a tired line of inquiry. She argues that in the modern age (in 1932) there are four kinds of books; highbrow literature, middlebrow literature that wants to be higher, middlebrow literature which is happy as it is and bestsellers. She regards only one of these doing the proper job of the novel which is ‘not to offer a refuge from actual life but to help the reader deal less inadequately with it.’ She feels the public are alienated from the higher works of literature and are being offered sub-par literature which goes too far to accept, rather than challenge, its readers and so fails to develop them as people.

According to the historical section of the book, this was not always the case. Elizabethans, not being a literate culture, formed their patterns of thinking from traditional folk knowledge, stories from the Bible and a massive amount of public singing. They ‘acquired their language from living conversation and not cheap, printed matter’ which meant that when they did write, it was full of invention and life. The influence of puritanism meant that even as literacy was growing, they still only had access to firm, thoughtful staples like ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’ and the works of Daniel Defoe. Because there was little children’s literature or cheap literature, those learning to read did so with solid, good adult writing.

For Leavis, this means that the birth of the novel was one with solid foundations but these were soon to wobble and then to shatter. With the introduction of Richardson’s (interminable) psychological delving and the development of sensibility and romanticism, the world was shortly to be broken. From being a ‘public prepared to take some trouble for its pleasures,’ readers grew ‘habits in-amicable to mental effort.’ Authors went from people with a better handle on the world and taught their readers, to people as immature as their readers who sympathised with them. 

The final blow was the democratisation of newspapers (largely caused by Dr Johnson house saviour, Lord Harmsworth) and the creation of cheap paperbacks to sell in places like railway stations and chemists.

Of course, this historical reading is a pile of crap.

Elizabethan writers were just as inspired by what they read as modern writers. In all his work, Shakespeare only created a handful of his own plots - and writers like Greene complained that Shakespeare’s work was dumbing down the stage. As for the puritan era of pure reading, this was when the later tales of chivalry had their moment, the birth of children’s literature and the existence of the whole genre of chapbooks, which were designed for the less literate in mind. As for the analysis of the novel from the eighteenth century on - she neglects pretty much the whole of Grub St and the frequent Jeremiads from writers who thought other writers weren’t writerly enough.

What the history would suggest to me, is that as more people read, the needs of the reading public became more complex. It is true that there are many books that are read for relaxation more than stimulation but that’s no bad thing, it’s just one of the many purposes of the novel that can co-exist. There are worryingly authoritarian notions that the increase in literacy only ended up devaluing literature; it almost sounds as if she would prefer it if most people did not read so their tastes won’t muddy her pure waters. She regards the common reader (whose opinion Samuel Johnson would often defer to) as a herd who are led into their reading and not individuals who make choices based on their needs.

It’s strange, because her analysis of the techniques of bestsellers is really sound. She identifies how they target the heart more than the head and how they encourage the reader to put themselves into the story. However, she doesn’t seem to recognise that these attributes are due to the increasing skills of writer and reader. When she complains that modern writers sketch bold outlines of characters for the reader to fill in, she doesn’t respect the ability of the reader to do this. If good writing is like a conversation (as Sterne says, and she agrees) Leavis doesn’t acknowledge the importance of the reader’s side of it. 

The last section, where Leavis compares examples of high/middle/low books manages to cause a great deal of unintentional comedy and make some good points. The good points are around how a novel can survive despite its faults because being such a long investment in time, its effects are accumulative, unlike the sharp shock of poetry. The comedy comes from her flashing quotations of three different texts on a page and essentially saying, ‘see, that one’s better’ without any real explanation why.

As flawed as I find the book, it does create thought and discussion and I want to end my review on some positive notes. The texts Leavis chooses to champion have certainly lasted longer in the public consciousness than those bestsellers she derides - I would argue that this is another example of the texts fulfilling different functions - but her eye for a classic is very astute. I was delighted to see her championing of Eliza Haywood (whom I love) and her warm recommendation has really encouraged me put Pilgrim’s Progress on my to-read-soon pile. She also has a wonderful way of slagging off texts she doesn’t like (her Man of Feeling rant is very entertaining).

If anyone really wants to read a conservative diatribe against modern taste, I’d recommend this far above Christopher Bookers loathsome ‘The Seven Basic Plots’.

Review: The National Science Museum

Until last week, the last time I had gone to the National Science Museum was when I was eight years old. Although I am inclined towards smaller museums, I have revisited the Natural History Museum a number of times and the V&A has become a go-to for me. 

My main reason for never going back was that my main memory of the museum was being underwhelmed and my sister (then three) having the mother of all tantrums. It was a real case of facing one’s fears when I agreed to help take a group of nearly sixty, six and seven year-olds to the museum. We moved between the Wonderlab and other hands-on areas of the museum and the children loved it - I began to realise there was something interesting in-between the touchy/handy bits.

So, when I had a free day, I went to see what those interesting things were and…

…Wow! The National Science Museum has one of the strongest collections most poorly presented of any museum I have ever seen.

I went on a Saturday afternoon and the museum was full of buggies and small children. They toddled and waddled up the aisles, they pointed at the big spaceships and the old choo-choo trains. For some reason, they ignored the little wooden box, the blob of mould or the plastic pot, they wobbled right past them, despite the fact these objects changed the world. 

To be fair, it wasn’t only the pre-schoolers that went straight past these epoch changing objects, adults also steamed past them to look at the bigger, flashier objects. Not one person (for the three hours I was there) looked - and that can’t be the fault of the visitors but the fault of the museum.

In the ‘Making of the Modern World’ gallery, there is a row of low cases with benches attached running directly down the centre of the room. Almost every object in these cases was a completely unique artefact of scientific history. Included within were; Watt’s model condenser, original Davy’s safety lamps, Jenner’s cowpox swabs, 1st telegraph machine, a first edition Lumière Brother’s cinematograph, the incubator of the first test tube babies, a sample of Fleming’s original penicillin - and so much more. A whole museum could be formed around what were simply being used as benches. 

This particular gallery is an utter treasure trove. Having recently read Pandaemonium, a lot of the industrial revolution ‘stuff’ had meaning to me. I was delighted to see Puffing Billy and Stephenson’s Rocket - especially livened (if that’s the right word) by the fact that it ran over an MP on it’s first official run. 

I’m currently reading Richard Holme’s The Age of Wonder which has two fascinating chapters on brother and sister Astronomical A-Team, William and Caroline Herschel. Tucked in a corner of the gallery were a specula from their forty-foot telescope, which discovered moons of Saturn. next to that was a polisher for these giant mirrors and next to that, one of Caroline Herschel’s comet-hunter telescopes. I had just finished a chapter about her on the train and it was a delight to see this tool which was also a symbol of her (shaky) independence and her lasting scientific impact.

To go into other objects that people walked past might be redundant, but I was amazed to see people nonchalantly stroll past Crick and Watson’s DNA model, Babbage difference engines and Julius, an early computer that generated the odds in greyhound racing.

The problem with the museum, which I think is best exemplified in the ‘Making of the Modern World’ gallery, is that without proper presentation, they are just objects. A viewer has to know the significance of the object to have a reaction to it and the museum does not do enough to put those objects into context. All the museum gives is a short paragraph in a small font - and that's when there isn’t someone sitting on it.

Another problem with that gallery (and the museum in general) is that it is impossible to follow the room chronologically without zigzagging across the room - a pattern of movement the cases in the room impedes. The room almost encourages the visitor to run through it, glancing quickly around and having a brief feeling of wonder as they are pumped towards the cafe and imax cinema.

I also feel the museum doesn’t do enough to advertise to a potentially more appreciative audience. All Science Museum advertisement on the tube focus on the Wonderlab, the (admittedly good fun) interactive area for children - but the museum is probably best enjoyed by adults. Almost every item in that building is priceless and there are hours and hours worth of rational entertainment in it, if you can get around the buggies.

***

As well as my afternoon in the Science Museum (and I haven’t even mentioned all the Watt & Boulton stuff - as read about in Jenny Uglow’s The Lunar Men) I also went to an event.

To celebrate 200 years of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus I went to a showing of the 1957 Hammer Horror The Curse of Frankenstein on imax followed by a brief session with Sir Chistopher Frayling and Kathryn Harkup. 

Although it didn’t really need the imax presentation, for eight pounds, it was fun to sit and watch Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee have at it in front of an audience. There was also something ticklish in seeing Kensington gore in South Kensington. It’s a good film, the audience had fun.

The discussion was interesting in how it flagged up how unsuccessful the novel was. Of five-hundred copies published by a very downmarket publisher, there were still some left three years later. It was the presentation of Frankenstein on the stage that brought the story fame. The verbal creature from the book grunts on stage, the comic assistant comes in and Frankenstein himself grew crazier and crazier.

It was fascinating hearing how Victor is neither a bad man or scientist, and the book is not anti-science. 

Although not a long Q&A, it was an interesting one - and I found out that Percy Shelley once tried to reanimate a dead cat.

Behind the Scenes at the Museum of London

On the 17^th of April 2018, the Samuel Johnson Reading Circle went behind the scenes with the Museum of London’s curator of fashion, Timothy Long. 

Having filed in and shown security several copies of the same book (we’re all reading The Age of Wonder in readiness for the next session) failed an initiation test involving blank metal coins and lockers – eventually we were sorted into some sort of order, ushered to the bowels of the museum and through all the signs not permitting us to enter- always a thrill.

The Fashion and Textiles department itself reminded me of secondary school technology classrooms; with high benches and high stools, rooms lined with bookcases containing box-files marked ‘Fashion 1984’ and ‘Youth Tribes 91-94’. There were partial mannequins dotted about and a piece of metal I recognised which had once served the place of a grand lady’s wig.

It was explained to us that the Museum of London had just finished a relatively major reshuffle of their sight/sound presentation of Vauxhall Gardens. A 15 minute show, with access to seating and changes in lighting, it was originally designated as a way of breaking up museum-fatigue and show off some of their extensive eighteenth century fashion collection. The previous pieces having been shown off for over five years, it was time to take the strain from them and give other outfits a chance to shine. We were shown some of those items before they were put to bed for a while.

The first was a relatively simple dress, with red and white stripes and little bushels of wheat embroidered on. Timothy explained how, in designing the Vauxhall Gardens exhibit, the team had created ideas of characters. This character was a relatively poor person who had saved up to go to the pleasure gardens and having spent a day there was preparing to leave before the richer, rowdier set arrived. The dress had been altered a number of times, as had almost all the dresses in the collection. Dresses were even cut to leave room for alteration as the dress was worn for different occasions and passed on to different people.

There are two broad approaches to keeping and displaying fashion and textiles. One is to focus on the fashion/art element of the piece, in which the item displayed is altered to bring it back as close to it was originally. The other is the historical approach, where all the alterations and even the dirt tells a story. We were told about a flapper dress that had a huge stain on it - which was left on the dress because it came from the original wearer smudging it when fixing her new car - an oil smudge as a sign of independence.

We were shown a man’s suit in a shiny green colour with cream cuffs and cream sleeves. These cream parts were heavily (and brightly) decorated in flowers and peacock feathers. We were asked to describe who the wearer might have been. We thought they may have been rich, perhaps someone who’s wealth came from the East India Company (hence the peacocks) and obviously someone who doesn’t mind showing of a little. All of which could have been right, but not necessarily. The lack of tailoring (shaping of the cloth to alter shape) and the way the embroidery occasionally went under the buttons showed it to be something of a kit. An expensive kit nonetheless, but still a broadly off-the-shelf look.

The last piece was a very striking court dress in a deep green. It was threaded throughout with silver cloth and had puffy bulbs at the front and clusters of metal and silk slivers in little pom-poms. Almost square at the bottom, triangular at the top and presenting bosoms front and centre, it would have been a very striking outfit. Peering underneath (because how couldn’t you?) the dress was structured with about four rigid frames, leaving the bottom half to be rather free underneath, even if the top was all squeezed and pulled about.

- Oh, and the deep green colour. Although awaiting tests, it is very possible that the dress was dyed with an arsenic based dye called Scheele’s Green, which could cause a person to foam green at the eyes, ears and mouth before dying. Alison Matthews David has written a book about such things called Fashion Victims, containing more deadly clothing.

Finally, we learned about displaying fashion pieces. The most common way is invisible display, in which a piece is placed on a mannequin without a head or any accessories. Often, these mannequins need to be radically altered to fit the body shape expectations of the time. This is the cheaper, easier method of display; accessories don’t need to be created or found, there is no problem with strange head shapes on mannequins or the expense of wigs and hats. However, the Vauxhall Gardens exhibit took this harder path, for which Timothy Long turned to the public and crowdfunded by £13,000.

The Johnson Reading Circle had a wonderful time peeping behind the scenes of one of London’s best museums and it was a lovely bonus meet-up, one which of course lingered with pizza and wine.

If you wish to follow Timothy Long and his work at the Museum of London, his twitter handle is @Fashion_Curator . He’s a man who obviously loves what he does and was very good company.

-And the photos were thanks to Dr Jane Darcy, 'cos I never have a camera.

Review: 3 Historic Houses

I was going to call this post, ‘What I did on my Easter Holidays’ because I have done rather a lot. The first week was spent in Poland. There I ate cheaply; drank wodka, learnt how to throw axes, visited a pinball warehouse, Jagiellonian University,  Wawel Castle - and went to Auschwitz. I don’t want to talk about Auschwitz.

The second week, I caught a sudden flu and, wrestling my way out of bed, went to three historic houses. 

The first was Benjamin Franklin House, an eighteenth century townhouse tucked down the side of Charing Cross Station where Franklin lived for sixteen years and is the only Franklin residence in existence in the world. They haven’t got much else though. With the exception of a purse, a letter and a pile of poorly anatomised bones found in the garden, they have nothing. The rooms are painted a sickly green that Franklin had his rooms painted in, some fireplaces…and some audiovisual equipment.

Because there is nothing in the house to look at, there’s a show. The show consists of a bewigged woman, playing Molly, the landlady’s daughter. She interacts with projected sound and vision of people like Peter Coyote and Imelda Staunton playing Benjamin Franklin and the landlady, Mrs Stevenson. The show is a prime piece of Philly cheese steak. The actress (who we didn’t get to thank) put her all into an extraordinarily difficult kind of performance, where she was trapped in a succession of rooms with eight people, acting and reacting to piped in voices in her, and our, heads. 

To give the audio-visual exhibition its due, it did pack in a lot of information about Benjamin Franklin, firmly establish many of his claims to fame and explain what he was doing in London, and how it all fall apart eventually. And as I said, the actress did a good a job in a strange situation, and I was a little moved at the end.

People wishing to go to the museum should know that it is only during these audio-visual tours and they happen on the hour (except Mondays, when it’s a tour of the empty building).

The volunteers who ‘welcomed’ me in, were terse and rattled off their words in quick, bored, spurts. I felt like I had put them out turning up ten minutes before a performance.

Next was a hop-skip and jump up to Handel and Hendrix in London, aka Handel/Hendrix House. 

I slipped in from the courtyard, was given a place to put my bags and told I could spend as long going up the stairs and back and forth as I wished as there was no set route. The bottom rooms contained a spinet (an early organ) and two harpsichords as well as a great many pictures. I saw a Hogarth I had never seen before; a portrait of Rich, the owner of the Lincoln’s Inn theatre, as well as a great many images of Vauxhall Gardens. A couple of the rooms had Handel music to listen to but the ones that didn’t, had volunteers. 

The volunteers at the Handel/Hendrix House were the secret weapon. Many of the rooms had little to show but a handful of objects (many of them reconstructions) and images -  but the volunteers had warmth and character and stories. I learnt that Handel was accused, probably wrongly, of sneaking out and having a sneaky nice wine instead of sharing it. I also got to have a chat about castrati, soprano wars (Handel preferred Faustina) and Handel’s personal preference for cherrywood and plum material.

This favouring of plum material and cherrywood was something I learnt by talking to the volunteer in the bedroom. She also taught me what a tester bed is - it’s one where the curtains are hung from the ceiling and not from a four-post. The room next to it showed a reconstruction of Handel’s banyan - a type of luxurious casual gown. Handel would have liked wearing one, because as well as being a stout person, he was a tall one, over six-foot. (Though I reckon Johnson still could have had him in a fight.) Also - I want a banyan.

There was also that staple of the historic house museum - dressing up. As fun as it is donning a nice frock on my visits to Dr Johnson’s House, at the Handel/Hendrix House the clothes inspired by both Handel and Hendrix. I had great joy in creating my own Jimmy Handel-rix monstrosity.

Upstairs, in the flat next door, lives the attic of Jimmy Hendrix. Similar to the Handel House, there was a suite of rooms playing music to give the background and then access into the main bed/sitting room, which only had one piece of original furniture but the rest recreated carefully from photos and interviews. It was a warm, comfy place, like the ultimate student gaff. The volunteer again was very interesting, telling me about how the room was used and pointing out just how many ashtrays there were.

I also took away a list of Hendrix’s record collection. It was great to know he had a Bonzo album, an Acker Bilk and a Frank Zappa. He was also into electrified Chicago bluesmen like Muddy Waters and (my fave) Howlin’ Wolf.

I also went to Dickens house. This was where Charles Dickens wrote his early novels, though most of the furniture comes from a later Dickens house - his dream home in Kent.

What this means is that unlike the other two historic houses, there are a great many objects linked to Dickens and his work in the house. As well as early drafts of novels; near priceless instalments from the major novels, the desk on which Dickens wrote, the window from which little Charles Dickens bemoaned his life as a bootblack worker and the bars which his dad (and Mr Micawber) were kept behind for debt. For a massive Dickens fan, there are enough relics to make a visit essential (and stand, much as I stood in Lichfield with a lump in my throat at Johnson’s writing board).

Dickens house also paints an interesting picture of Dickens. There is a set of clothes, showing his slim, short figure. There’s a mirror with a description of Dickens practising the faces and voices for his characters and his personally designed speaking desk with a reading copy marked up by Dickens to help him perform it. While his… ‘complicated’ personal life is touched on, his energy and enthusiasm make him seem like good company.

I was also delighted that one of his favourite authors was Oliver Goldsmith, and he had a personally bound life of Goldsmith. He was also a great fan of Smollett and Fielding, and had Hogarth prints throughout the house - I liked him more for this.

The last thing Dickens House focuses on, is the way the young, upwardly moving household was managed in the nineteenth century. The kitchens and wash house are very interesting - and I would love to take the kids next time I’m forced to do Victorians.

The Dickens House also had a volunteer per floor, one of which was very friendly but the others very clearly didn’t want to be talked to. Oddly, both the person at the pay-desk and the one who talked to me, both told me they found Dickens' work a bit of a chore.

Ultimately, a historic house museum relies on what you bring to it; a diehard Dickensian will adore the Dickens house and a Franklin fanatic will thrill to walk the halls of their great philosopher - but in and of itself, the Handel/Hendrix House won me over because of the joy of the volunteers that brought the two very different personalities together.

Review: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

I know Hamilton is the cool founding father of the US, but I was always more interested in Franklin.

I knew a little of his achievements by osmosis; I knew he’d proved lightning to be electricity and created rods to protect buildings; that he’d invented a hauntingly strange musical instrument, that he’d drafted the declaration of independence and constitution and also written a book on farts. I was aware that he was integral in getting French help in the American rebellion, he was a member of the Lunar Society and once lost a chess match to Kempelen’s Turk.

I didn’t know I was only scratching the surface.

It turns out Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography doesn’t cover most of the famous years of his life, finishing shortly before the rebellion. It’s more of an origin tale than a proper autobiography. The first part was written in England very shortly before the kick off of the rebellion, the other two parts from comfortable old age later.

They broadly tell the story of how an impoverished runaway became a newspaperman, gained in influence as a projector of good causes and became a trusted and vital part of colonial infrastructure - and as a bonus, he also was given a gold medal and membership to the Royal Society for work on electricity. 

I was expecting a man full of energy, interests and unquenchable spirit for life like Erasmus Darwin. I found a stiff, prudish, puritanical prig stuffed on pious platitudes. There’s not a tired phrase Franklin doesn’t cling to, a person he doesn’t meet who he deplores for drinking - a man who scolds himself for a fondness for puns and describes his only interest, reading, as something that ‘debauched me from my work’. 

Franklin also has this peculiar anti-interest in food. He is extremely proud of his indifference to food and is a vegetarian for a while and like many vegetarians, he feels the need to tell people he is one. I’m with Samuel Johnson that ‘He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.’

To be fair to him, he did work hard - but he also made sure everyone knew he was working hard, ensuring he was the one who wheelbarrowed paper from the supplier so everyone could see. This hard work set the foundation for all he was going to achieve and could be used as inspiration if I didn’t find him a little cold.

It’s a subtext, but Franklin is very ready to drop friends when they aren’t of any use to him, even grabbing one annoying man by the crotch and throwing him in a river. He has a club called the Junta but when they want to expand the operation, he won’t allow it except in secret, to prevent useless people joining.

At one point he considered setting up his own deistic religion, dedicated to worshipping his teachings. These teachings were of 13 virtues and an elaborate system of trying to live up to those virtues, focussing on one a week and making marks when the others weren’t achieved. I simply can’t trust a man who thinks that people can be perfect-able, and appears to think he has got rather close to it - except perhaps humility, the 13th and most reluctant virtue.

Still, the man did get things done. His Junto (Aka BF and his BFFs) pooled their books together and set up a library, which became a pattern for libraries across the country. He also set up volunteer fire associations, a militia, a university, decent paving and street lighting - and all manner of good things. As clammy as I find Franklin in the book, he was a person of great achievement.

I didn’t hate this book, but I was surprised that I didn’t love the writer.

Two favourite titbits:

That the mostly Quaker council of Philadelphia, being forced to send money to another colony to buy gunpowder but unable for pacifist reasons, managed to pass the law with the following sophistry; that it could send ‘wheat and other grains’.

And that when London printers took the first day of the week off to sleep away the hangover of a busy weekend, it was called worshipping St Monday.

Review: Dr Johnson & Mr Savage by Richard Holmes

It’s an open secret that the image of Samuel Johnson which has gone down in history is not the one who created most of the great works he was famous for. It wasn’t until after the ‘Rambler’, ‘Rasselas’, ‘Dictionary’ and his poetry that he became the ‘Great Cham of Literature’. During the time Boswell knew him, he was comfortably off with his greatest struggles behind him.

This book tells a story before the safe, rotund old man - when Johnson was a skeletal, thuggish looking man carrying a large cudgel with which he single-handedly saw off four attackers. What became grouchiness was once outright aggression; what became fun political knockabout was once dedicated extremism and what became a healthy disdain for the wealthy was once a hatred for all rich folk.

As well as being introduced to this young, aggressive Johnson, we also meet his new bestie, Richard Savage. Having met him in Johnson’s description of his life, this new version of Savage is infinitely more…psychotic. Johnson’s Savage had a legitimate complaint in being denied his birthright as Lady Macclesfield and Earl Rivers bastard son. Richard Holmes’ Savage is most likely deluded in his belief but he certainly never seemed to question it. Where he is pursued by his evil mother in Johnson’s version of the story, he is the pursuer here, Poor Lady Macclesfield is stalked by Savage, who breaks into her house and continues a literature vendetta against her which culminates in the (wonderfully vicious) poem, ‘The Bastard’.

The endearingly childlike Savage of Johnson’s life is replaced by a more knowing, cunning person. When he mets young Samuel, Savage tends to keep him apart from his other lives, hiding his suaver and more successful elements from Samuel’s sympathy. Holmes also reveals that Savage was far more successful person earlier in his life than Johnson ever registers. At one point he had two houses, one in London and one in the Richmond countryside. At this time, he was also part of a circle including Aaron Hill and James Thompson (of Seasons fame). 

This period of success was interrupted by his murder trial. The chapter about this sequence of events was the highlight of the book. As well as going through the trial transcripts and literature around the trial with meticulous detail, Holmes also explains in parallel how Johnson presented the trial in his own telling of Savage’s life.

That said, Holmes still manages to create a picture of a fascinating and strangely likeable character - how Savage still remains a captivating person is a mystery to me but I appreciate a charismatic arsehole in life. It is helped that I love his poetry, it's strange and vigorous with an almost romantic mode of drama combined with an Augustan mode of expression

This isn’t a long book but it is a thoroughly engaging one. Richard Holmes evokes a radically different version of Johnson and describes a fascinating portrait of an infuriating and enticing man in Savage. Their friendship feels real, their world disturbingly grimy and their story an important one. 

Highly recommended.

Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' at the Dr Johnson Reading Circle

On the 20th of March, the Dr Johnson Reading Circle met to get a dose of the good doctor himself.

Clutching copies of the ‘Selected Lives’ the conversation wheeled through topics as diverse as the mechanics of eighteenth century copyright, the footballer Gazza and the contents of Thomas Gray’s small clothes - and all of it relevant.

It seemed quite clear that poetry simply doesn’t hold the same place in modern discourse as it did in the eighteenth century. In the coffee houses, people used to read it aloud to each other, to debate poems and rate poets. Poetry was used to mark state occasions, to thank friends and to flirt. The appointment of the Laureate became a subject of much discussion and speculation. From a relatively young age, boys were made to translate Latin poetry, then Grecian into English. A poem could even scandalise and publicise, it could go viral. 

So it makes sense the London publishers, who had finally been challenged, beaten and forced to accept the idea that perpetual copyright was not a thing, wanted to hold onto their poems. In a move to oust cheaper, Scottish editions of poetry, a massive consortium of booksellers decided to  pool their resources and to get studious, authoritative lives of all the poets from Mr Preface himself, Samuel Johnson. 

He promptly took the commission and, enjoying himself so much, created some of the first(ish) literary biographies. His discussion on Metaphysical poets, or the structure of ‘Paradise Lost’ or the merits of Dryden vs Pope are still some of the starting places from which modern critics must go. What’s more, they can still surprise.

A member noted how pleasant it was to be with Johnson, how his flow of verbiage has a comforting streak - and there were many incidences of Johnson delivering zingers against his subjects. Milton is wonderfully put down by a line describing him, ‘trying to be funny’, Gray writes like a man ‘with a kind of strutting dignity, like a man walking on tiptoe’. Dyden’s words seem to ‘drop by chance’ whereas Swift ‘talks big when he says nothing’. 

Johnson’s criticism holds up too. His discussion on ‘Paradise Lost’ was so insightful and well explained that members regretted that their A-level teachers hadn’t given them a copy of Johnson’s analysis back in the day. Johnson was so engaging about the poem that two of the members were sent straight to ‘Paradise Lost’ (one person completed it. I sadly, did not).

However, the star of the night, the Life we kept looping back to was Johnson’s life of Richard Savage. I did a review of it on here six years ago, it being the first piece of Johnson I ever read, and I loved it so much it spurred me on to read much, much more. 

Written much earlier than the other lives, this is written by young, skeletal Johnson. The thirty year old who was told he would be better off as a market porter. The man forced to become a writer because there was nothing else he was trained to do. This was written by Johnson the political thinker, the rebel; a man who, despite being poorer than everyone around himself, knew himself to be cleverer -just like Savage.

Savage was a poet who befriended the young Johnson when they both wrote copy for Cave’s’ Gentleman’s Magazine’. Savage claimed to be the illegitimate child of Earl Rivers and the then Lady Macclesfield, who rejects and persecutes him. Johnson uses this to base the whole reading of Savage’s life, telling it as one full of brushes with greatness, almost success but ultimately success frustrated at the last moment. 

He seems a strange kind of person for Johnson to write about, even stranger that they were friends. Savage was a dissolute, sponging man filled with pride, who was better at writing about virtue than living it but there was something about Savage’s ability to carry on cheerfully and regardless that seems to hugely impress the neurotic Johnson.

The intimate nature of it, the small personal details and the way he builds an astonishingly clear picture of an utterly irritating yet charming man make it soar over the others. Johnson may have opinions on Milton and Swift and Pope (and my goodness, he does) but it doesn’t have the immediacy of the Savage piece. I’ve had people like Savage kip on my sofa, people with talents who are entertaining but who also feel they deserve to be supported by everyone else because of those talents. Not only do I feel I know Savage, but I share as mixed a relationship with him as Johnson did, all because of that lovely writing.

Overall, this may be my least favourite Johnson performance. I find the subject of poets and their lives too narrow and although Johnson can (and does) create some wonderful quotes and moments from the subject, it doesn’t let him really stretch his legs and go romping.

Next Dr Johnson Reading Circle we will be reading Richard Holmes’ ‘Age of Wonder’ but followers of the Grub Street Lodger will get a sneaky peek at Holmes and a little more of Savage when I look at his 1993 book, ‘Dr Johnson & Mr Savage’.